2026 Fall DLC: Democracy's Library: Preserving and Sharing the Public Record

Democracy's Library, established in 2022, is built on a straightforward but urgent premise: governments have created an abundance of information and put it in the public domain, but the public cannot easily access it. With more than 1,000 collections and 11 million items and growing, Merrilee Proffitt of the Internet Archive will share how a coalition of libraries and archivists preserves federal, state, and local government documents through web harvesting, digitization, and community uploads. Partnerships now span the United States and Canada, including collaborations with the University of Toronto, Library and Archives Canada, and provincial and municipal archives, making the case that collaborative stewardship of the public record is both a civic obligation and an urgent necessity. You will learn how you might help us build Democracy’s Library, what you can find there, and how to support your patrons in using the collection.